Diabetes Meal Plans

If you have recently been diagnosed with diabetes, it can be quite a shock to your system. Understanding the proper diabetes meal plan is critical to living well with the disease. If you don't understand what foods to eat and which ones to avoid, you can easily disrupt your blood sugar levels and make the condition much harder to manage.

Here are some easy to follow tips for the newly diagnosed diabetic:

First, make sure that your diet is full of a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Color is important here. Choose foods from every color of the rainbow as that will help you to get plenty of vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients. You will also get lots of fiber which will help to usher excess blood sugar out of your system.

Second, focus on eating whole-grain foods rather than processed ones. Instead of eating white rice, use brown rice. You can also easily find whole-grain pasta products at the grocery store. Choose a low sugar pasta sauce and you have the perfect dinner entrée.

Third, consume only non-starchy vegetables such as broccoli, green beans and carrots with meals. Starches quickly turn into sugar in the body which means that you can have major blood sugar dips and spikes if you eat them.

Fish is a great addition to your diet and should be eaten at least 2 to 3 times per week. You may also want to add good oils to your diet, such as olive oil. These help overall brain function and mental sharpness.

Beverages are one place that many people make a mistake because sugary ones are filled with calories. Instead, focus on drinking lots of water and calorie free diet drinks. You should also choose nonfat dairy products such as nonfat yogurt, nonfat cheese and skim milk.

Diabetes meal plans are very similar in nature to other healthy diet guidelines. Stick with fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and water, and your blood sugar will remain much more stable over time.

photo by Nyboer Creative

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